Are the Stars Aligned?

I caught most of the 4th quarter of the Clippers' game last night. The most fascinating part of it was DeAndre Jordan. With under 5 minutes left and the Kings clinging to a 1-point lead, they intentionally fouled him. He nearly made the first and then banked in the second (tie game). After a Kings basket, Patrick Patterson literally ran across the court to try to foul DeAndre again, but there was an inadvertent whistle. Then DeAndre inbounded the ball and stood out-of-bounds for 5 seconds, but he was fouled immediately when he stepped inbounds. He then clanked two free throws, but the Clippers got the offense rebound -- but then Chris Paul jacked up and missed a 3-pointer 6 seconds into the shot clock to avoid another intentional foul on DeAndre. After another Kings basket (4 point lead), Paul rushed up court and got fouled, after which DeAndre came out. The Clippers only trailed by 2 at that point, but that sequence killed them mentally for the rest of the quarter (it didn't help, of course, that Toney Douglas got insanely hot right after that).

Wow, what a liability DeAndre Jordan is. I guess when you have a team like the Clippers with an offensive rating of 110, it's worth intentionally fouling anyone with a free throw pct. lower than 55%. The question for the Sixers tonight: who is smart enough to be the intentional fouler?

When he came in (around 6 minutes left), the Kings had just gone on a 16-3 run with Odom guarding Cousins and several baskets in the paint. So he probably came in for defense. It worked for a minute, until the sequence I described above.

Interestingly, Iguodala at 58% is hovering just above the percentage at which teams should begin to foul him intentionally. I still haven't seen anyone do it, though.

And this is exactly why i can't understand a lot of people who think DeAndre Jordan is a good basketball player. He is such a liability at the FT line that the Clippers can't even put him on the court. Interestingly, the same thing stands for everyone's favorite Andre Drummond. If they can't significantly improve their FT shooting they will never be factors in the NBA.

Hack-a-somebody to the extreme has worked exactly once since 1985. That's not to say having one of these guys on the floor in the final minutes hasn't led to losses, but intentional fouling to the extreme really hasn't worked in the past (the one loss probably wasn't even an example).

I don't think any of those players qualify for the "fouled intentionally" group, except for Howard and Shaq. And Howard and Shaq were only fouled intentionally in desperate situation when their teams were already losing IIRC. I do expect this strategy to be employed, and work, soon by "stat-friendly" teams. And in order to work the FT% of the fouled player shouldn't be above 45% IMO. Fouling out, bonus and offensive rebounds of FTs are all stuff that need to be taken into account, which is why i think players shooting between 45 and 55% are actually slightly positive.

Just have to point this out: Wilt shot 38% from the line his last year with the Sixers while leading the league in attempts. His FG% was 59.5. That might have been the year he decided to shoot free throws from inside the key, about 2 feet behind the line. In one of the years he shot them underhanded (I don't know how long he did that), he shot 61%, his career high. That was the 50/game season, '61-'62.

I remember watching him fire away from the line in his later years. The ball would bounce right back to him sometimes.

Shaq shot 52.7% for his career. Wilt was at 51%. Russel at 56.1%. That's far from great but not really worth fouling intentionally, when you consider the players fouling out and opponents getting into the bonus early. Meanwhile Jordan is at 43.1% for his career, with only one "respectable" season, over 45%. Drummond has shot 36.5% in his rookie year so far. These are FAR worse numbers. And in today's age of advanced stats, that makes them borderline useless. If they can't improve, they won't be able to play at all soon when coaches truly embrace advanced stats. The reason these guys are even on the court is because most coaches are still "old school". That will change very soon.

Really enjoyed the comment about the potential for Turner to get his shot blocked by Jordan's knee.

Win or lose, I'm guessing the Sixers look good again tonight. Have a real bad feeling about tomorrow against Denver though. Anyone else notice when Collins was talking about Bynum the other night he never gave the slightest indication that Bynum was in the Sixers future plans? Seemed to go out of his way not to do so.

Well Bynum is from New Jersey isn't he? I don't think he can play for an NBA team in New Jersey, they don't have one any more. And there's really no way he ends up in Brooklyn unless the sixers are monumentally stupid. Like Billy King and Ed Stefanski look like Stephen Hawkings compared to this kind of stupid

I think it's simple. The day after the playoffs end, Bynum won't be on this roster. Why should Collins talk as if he'll be back next year, especially when he hasn't played at all for this team and considering there is no sign that he'll ever be more than a journeyman?

The fact that he plays like one of the two best centers in the game when he's healthy is a sign he'll be more than a journey man. He isn't an average player - he's a great player with knee problems. I don't know that Bill Walton was ever a journeyman - when he was healthy he was good- he just wasn't that healthy.

As for Doug saying 'goodbye' to Bynum because he won't be here next season - if that's true - it's foolish for numerous reasons including the fact that Doug shouldn't feel safe that he'll be part of the sixers next season. To me he's made numerous public comments that were mistakes this year, and that's just part of a coaches job - and if he's dismissing Bynum as part of the team next season - that's another one.

I just don't think he'll ever be healthy again. The signs are all bad. Weren't you saying earlier this year that Bynum has never played a full season and the Sixers should not sign him this summer? Seems like you've changed your tune.

Walton was pretty much a journeyman after 1978. He played decently for the Clippers before being traded for a slightly over the hill Cedric Maxwell. He was a good back-up center for the Celtics for one season, 19 minutes a game over 80 games. It was the most games he ever played in a season. His final year, he only played 10 games.

What Doug said is foolish because he "shouldn't feel safe?" According to whom? You want your coach talking and acting like a lame duck? He should be kissing Bynum's ass so he can keep his job?

Oh - I wouldn't re-sign bynum - but when he's healthy he's not a journeyman - to me a journeyman is a mediocre player with one skill (ala Kyle Korver) that keeps getting him jobs. Bynum is an injury plauged star, and as such some team will take that risk, I just don't want it to be sixers.

Doug Collins shouldn't feel like he has job security because, well, he shouldn't. He's the guy coaching the team and he's the guy buying the groceries, this Bynum debacle is on him. Throwing players under the bus publicly is never good practice be you Doug Collins or Eddie Jordan, man up and admit your failures instead of blaming others.

Just remember, I never wanted this out of the game 20 years guy to be coaching the team anyway and I hope he's canned the moment the season ends and goes back to TNT where he can pretend he knows better, just like Jeff Van Gundy does

I believe Charlie is saying that Bynum's health may well be so compromised that he'll be reduced to being a journeyman, like Walton, Danny Manning, Antonio McDyess, and other banged-up big men with strong starts to their careers.

But your definition of it is a definition no one uses. Take Billups. He was, once, a near-elite point guard, but now he's a journeyman whose only remaining skill is hitting threes. Whether Bynum was a star when he's healthy is totally irrelevant to whether he could become a journeyman if he's never quite his healthy 22-year-old self again, but you're too daft to get that, I guess.

When I hear journeyman I think of guys who probably should've never been in the league, but somehow keep finding a new team to take a chance on them. Willie Green would've been a prototypical journeyman if the Sixers didn't foolishly give him a long-term deal. Evan Turner should be a journeyman, but he was drafted too high, probably. Rodney Carney would be another example. I don't really look at fallen stars as journeymen, don't consider Grant Hill a journeyman.

Not that it matters, but I think that, in common usage at least, a journeyman is usually someone who does belong in the NBA, just not in a very prominent role. Basically a well-traveled role player. Not to take Bleacher Report seriously, but when you google nba and journeyman, the first thing that comes up is one of their stupid slideshows, and it lists Ratliff, Joe Smith (a chapter of whose Wikipedia bio is entitled "NBA journeyman"), "Curt" Thomas, Raja Bell, and James Posey as journeymen. Maybe that's the high end of the journeyman pool and you're thinking more along the lines of, I don't know, Tony Massenburg, but I think it can cover anyone from a very mediocre starter to a 12th man, the key feature of course being playing for a lot of teams, often on short contracts.

Nobody's more of a Walton fan than I am, and I never thought Manning was much of a player, but Manning had a much better career than Walton if you just look at the numbers, which surprised me. I had no idea Manning scored as much as he did for so many years. Walton only had about 4 good seasons, 1 and a half of which were better than Manning could ever hope for. He played in 2 All-Star games; so did Manning. Not such a ridiculous comparison.

When he was at UCLA, Walton might have been the best center in basketball.

Nobody would call Bill Walton a journeyman, but at the end of his career, he was no better than James Donaldson or Wayne Cooper. Brian's right - journeyman describes what a player's maximum ability is, not what a player turns into because of injury. Ralph Sampson is another good example. From All-Star to mediocrity in a few years because of chronic injury - a fallen star.

Haha yeah if I hadn't read many of GoSixers posts in the past I would have been appalled by him telling someone that they should never be hired as a lawyer and should go fail the bar over such a benign post. But now I realize that GoSixers is the most sensitive and defensive commenter here and I just laugh.

"Intention", "should". Any fool knows that once a law has been passed it doesn't matter what the
"intention" was on how it "should" be used. Those who can exercise it will use it as they see fit. That said I am broadly in favour of these new regulations.

So can four other teams, but I think I'd give it only about a 5-10 percent chance of happening. For one thing, unless they get a top 3 seed, they have about a 50/50 chance of losing in the first round. Then they face the Thunder or Spurs in the second, and then if they survive that they see the Thunder or Spurs or Grizzlies in the conference finals. Given how brutal the Western playoffs should be, with every series likely going 6 or 7 games outside of maybe 2 or 3 first-round matchups, it's really hard to see anyone giving Miami a tough time. Miami shouldn't even need to play LeBron or Wade more than 30 minutes a game in the first round, and I'm not sure the second round will be much tougher.

I feel ashamed to be typing this, but they need to have Turner bring the ball up. Get Jrue running off screens early in the shot clock, getting the ball on the wing or even in the post if they can. Make it harder to trap him.

Duncan had 25, 13, 6 and 4 blocks tonight. He is, of course, the oldest player ever to record such a line, and excluding himself, the closet anyone's ever come was Olajuwon when he was almost 4 years younger than Duncan is today. And if you pare it down to 25/12/4/4 games, he set the record tonight, after previously setting it in his last game 3 days ago, after previously breaking the old record in December by 5 months. Over the last 3 games, he's averaged 27.7 points, 14.7 rebounds, 4 assists and 3.3 blocks.

I think their only chance is to push Thad and Jrue here when LAC goes to their bench. See if you can put a run together, if you can, ride them for heavy minutes. If you can't, you can throw in the towel and sit them the final 8 minutes anyway.

It was from some stupid site and it's completely inaccurate. Actually, this is the real list. At 13, we move into a tie for 138th place, but that goes back to the 40s. In the three-point era, it's 98th place, and even just looking at this century, it's 29th place.

Actually, my calculations were one loss short; with a loss tonight we move into a tie for 112th place all-time, 81st place in the three-point era, 24th place in this century, 16th worst since LeBron entered the league, and 7th worst in the last 5 seasons. And it's already the worst road losing streak any team's had this year by a game. So it is a pretty bad streak, but by no means an historic one.

I think the difference there is that Doug likes Kwame, or maybe felt some kind of guilt for not protecting him from Jordan. Kwame bothers me more than Bynum really. He was a half-decent journeyman in previous contract years, and the instant he gets a two-year deal he gets fat and completely useless.